


Misunderstanding

by anonymousComrade



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cultural Differences, F/M, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-18
Updated: 2011-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousComrade/pseuds/anonymousComrade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>>Dave: Punch Karkat in the snout to establish interference.</p><p>For Captchalogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misunderstanding

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt:
> 
>  _More play on the quadrants!_
> 
>  _Troll love is based on pity, so naturally, confessions and cute little quips between trolls will sound...odd to the kids._
> 
>  _Trolls and kids meet up, either Post SGURB or it never happened, and some romantic shenanigans ensue._
> 
>  _I was thinking maybe between Karkat and Terezi, where Karkat, jealous of Dave, proceeds to give Terezi the most heartfelt pity confession EVER, much to the delight of Terezi who's all c': >_
> 
>  _Only to be promptly slapped by Dave or Rose and Jade because 'HOLY FUCK HOW CAN YOU TALK TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND LIKE THAT'_
> 
>  _Or possibly, Tavros and Kanaya try to confess their pity for Jade and Rose respectively, only to be rejected until Rose and Jade better understand Troll Love._
> 
>  _Maybe some trolls are flirting with each other and the humans are like 'what'. You can go in any direction! Just adorable cultural misunderstandings and eventual understanding please C:_
> 
>  _Bonus if, surprisingly, John is the only kid that has gotten the quadrants thing down._
> 
> No points for guessing where I stopped reading!

You are KARKAT VANTAS, and you're about to enact a plan to get Terezi's attention and put that Strider punk in his place, all at once.

God, it was so obvious. You have no idea how it eluded you for so long. Past you was probably holding out on you, that asshole. What even IS that guy's problem?

No time to think about that now, there's a more pressing issue to deal with: the relationship between that nooksucker Dave and a certain blind girl you are so hopelessly flushed for. Seeing how you've watched pretty much every movie on the subject that ever existed, you are uniquely qualified to identify a budding matespritship when you see one, and you've going to have to act fast if you're going to put a stop to this one.

Some people would call what you're about to do crazy, stupid, or "clearly the awful plan of some kind of horrible jealous lunatic." Those people are obviously morons and have no idea what they're talking about. Come on, seriously, you? Jealous? Of Dave Strider? Not fucking likely! No, you're better than him in every concievable way, and now you're going to prove it--- haha _yes_ , everyone's here in the common area, and they're drawing comics together, this is fucking perfect! You could not have _asked_ for better conditions to do this in.

You clear your throat and ready yourself.

"Terezi Pyrope!" you call, loud enough to be heard over the din of John's shitty Earth movie, loud enough to make both Dave and Terezi look up from their drawings, loud enough to distract Sollux from his coding.

"Hey, Karkles! What'd you need?"

You take a deep breath before proceeding. You do _not_ want to screw this up, not just because falling on your face here in front of Strider would ruin everything, but because you mean every word of what you're about to say. You've been meaning to do something like this for her for a long time; what better time to do it than now?

"I _pity_ you." Now _everyone_ has stopped what they were doing, including Terezi herself.

"You're a messed-up bag of neuroses, obsessed with your own twisted and frankly, _insane_ sense of whatever passes in your head for justice. You're blind in more ways than one. Honestly, the way you lick everything is fucking disgusting and the way you cackle drives me up the goddamn wall. To call you a fucking weirdo would be the understatement of the sweep, all sweeps. You are _exactly_ the kind of girl my lusus warned me about. Anyone else would have thrown their hands up, screamed 'man, forget THIS' to the sky and walked away."

Her face lights up like a wriggler's on Twelfth Perigree's Eve. "And yet, you're still here?"

"And yet, I'm still here."

You have never seen her smile quite like this. Mission fucking _accomplished_.

"Oh, Karkat!" The pitch of Terezi's voice raises an octave. Kanaya is smiling warmly in your direction. Aradia has a huge grin on her face. Sollux is smirking a bit; you can't tell whether he's thinking _KK, you sly dog_ or _about fucking time already_. Vriska isn't really paying attention but you know what, fuck Vriska. Rose and Jade are just sort of dumbfounded and John's got the same idiotic grin he always has but they're humans and they don't understand so whatever. Dave is as inscrutable as ever but you can tell he's just fucking _fuming_ under those douchebag shades.

Your gaze falls on Terezi again. She wipes a drop of teal from her eye as she walks toward you. You open your arms to embrace her and _oh God ow what the fuck someone help_

 **== >**

You are DAVE STRIDER, and you have heard enough.

Ever since you met up with the trolls, Karkat's been an even angrier jerk than usual. Terezi swears he's no worse than before but you're pretty sure that is some straight-up weapons-grade bullshit.

He'd never admit it, but Karkat is sort of jealous of your friendship with Terezi. Okay, he's _really_ jealous, which is still putting it mildly. You don't really get _why_ , she's just your friend and a fellow artist and you wouldn't trade your art jams for all the sloppy interspecies makeouts in paradox space, but whatever, you're not about to stop hanging out with her just because he doesn't like you.

Then he comes in here, gets everyone's attention, and just starts laying into her. Isn't this asshole supposed to be her boyfriend? What the fuck is going on here?

And that's when you decided you weren't going to just stand there and let him get away with this. You're not thrilled with the idea of meddling in the personal issues of aliens from another dimension, but Terezi is your friend, and you won't stand for this.

So you flash step, cock back your fist, and punch him in the snout to establish interference.

Everyone in the room is a bit stunned. Someone finally breaks the silence: "What the hell, Dave!" But surprisingly, it's Terezi's voice, not Karkat's.

"Sorry, 'Rezi. Your boyfriend's a dick and I couldn't let him talk shit about you like that."

"What are you--" She is cut off by Karkat. "Why the FUCK did you do that?!"

"I told you. Don't care if she's your girlfriend, bro. She's my friend, and if you talk to her like that again and I hear about it, you can take it up with my right hook. Crazy bastard's just dying to get to know you." You aren't sure if this bit of white-knighting is so lame it loops back into genuine irony, or if it's just pathetic, but nobody messes with your friends, not even nubby-horned shitheads with Napoleon complexes.

"'Talk to her like tha--' it's a traditional fucking declaration of pity, you nooksniffing idiot! Jegus _Christ_ , haven't _any_ of you idiots read Troll Shakespeare?"

Wait, what?

A hand grabs your shoulder. "Conference time, dude." John pulls you into a nearby room.

 **== >**

You are JOHN EGBERT, and you really should have had the foresight to explain all this beforehand.

If you're supposed to be leading your human comrades, then you didn't do a good enough job, because what happened just now was kind of an embarassing incident! But it's okay, you've explained it all to Dave, and surely it won't happen again.

"So... troll romance is based on _pity?_ " Well, it _probably_ won't happen again. This is the fifth time he's asked this, even though you've explained this to him several times. You even got out the diagrams, I mean come on, this isn't that hard to grasp.

"Yeah, but troll pity isn't like human pity." And you go on to explain how.

"Sounds like human romance with the serial numbers filed off to me, Egbert."

"Haha, it kind of is! Except they came first, so I guess that makes us the knockoffs."

"How the fuck do you even understand all this?"

"Bluh, Karkat gave me this speech like fifty times. Don't ask him about it unless you've got a pen and paper ready, he'll go on for hours about it."

"I'll remember that."

"No, really. He made me take notes once. Like, for real." Dave smirks at that. He has no idea how serious you are.

The door opens; it's Jade. "Hey guys! What's going on here?"

"Just educating our cool buddy here on how to be more multicultural," you reply.

"Oh, that's good! By the way, I smoothed things over with Karkat and Terezi for you, Dave. Karkat still wants to beat you senseless but Terezi's not mad at you anymore. As far as she's concerned, it was a cultural difference, you thought Karkat was doing something bad and you were sticking up for her, so she forgives you."

Well, that's good. Okay, Karkat's still mad but Karkat's _always_ mad.

"Well, I guess that concludes this session of Troll Culture 101, Dave. Any questions?"

 **== >**

You are DAVE STRIDER, and yeah, there's still something you don't really quite get. Matespritship is easy enough to understand, and kismesitude, being its opposite, isn't much harder. Auspisticing is basically mediation to keep enemies from killing each other or blackcheating. But there's one quadrant you're still a little shaky on.

"What the fuck, exactly, is moirallegience? Is it, like, super best friends forever or what?"

"Eh, kind of," John replies. "Moirails keep each other from hurting other people or themselves, and they protect one another."

Wait a minute.

 _Moirails keep each other from hurting other people or themselves..._ You remember the time you told Terezi that maybe killing Vriska wasn't such a great idea, and how she stopped you from throwing yourself at Jack in a bid for revenge when he was at his strongest.

 _...and they protect one another._ You remember your fist slamming into Karkat's face only minutes ago, and how Jade had spun it.

You suddenly wonder what you might have just gotten yourself into.

 **== >**

You are KARKAT VANTAS, and past you has managed to screw over current you once again.

How could you have been so blind? There was nothing to be jealous over (yes, it was jealousy, you can admit that to yourself now). Dave and Terezi were never anything more than friends drawing shitty comics together.

 _Were_ never anything more than friends, until recently, thanks to your unbelievably asinine ideas.

Oh, you most definitely filled your flushed quadrant today, no question about that. Your declaration of pity in front of this audience has won Terezi's heart, but you think maybe she only ever really had eyes (nostrils?) for you to begin with.

Until now.

No, Dave was never your rival for Terezi's flushed affections, you are pretty sure now, and if you hadn't been an absolute blockhead about this, maybe they would just be friends and this whole mess could have been avoided. But now? Your plan has most certainly backfired on you.

"Kaaaarkat! I know you don't like him, but come on, you should be happy for me! It's not every day a girl has BOTH her red quadrants filled, you know!"

You'll never get rid of him now. The girl's got diamonds in her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> So it's OTP Month on the forums or something like that. I kind of already wrote for that but I saw this prompt and decided "hey, why the hell not" once the scenario started unfolding in my mind.
> 
> No points for guessing who my favorite pairing is (even the most cursory of glances at what I've written will reveal what I enjoy, I mean come on I can't stop writing it), but what you might not know is that I'm also a pretty big fan of Dave and Terezi as moirails! You could say they are my _other_ OTP.
> 
> Oh my God I'm using the term "OTP" without even the slightest hint of irony, single bullet to the base of the skull, it's the quickest way
> 
> So is it completely obvious that I can't write Dave at all or what


End file.
